Black Mesa is a 2020 first-person shooter video game developed and published by Crowbar Collective. It is a fan-made remake of Half-Life (1998) made in the Source game engine. Originally published as a free mod in September 2012, Black Mesa was approved for commercial release by Valve, the developers of Half-Life.
Reviews:
- Overwhelmingly Positive (95% of 114,039) All Time
- Very Positive (94% of 854) Recent
Cant wait for Blue Shift !!
I've never played any of the Half Life games, is this the best place to start?
IMO the correct thing to do is to play Black Mesa after playing the originals. I treat this like an alternate way to experience Half-Life 1
Wouldn't start with this, but it's fun to play after the originals.
This is fan-made, so I would start with the Half-Life games themselves. There's a moment in the first Half-Life game where you encounter enemy troops for the first time and I'd still want to experience it in the original engine, no matter how old it is now. That said, I've played through them all, and I don't love them. It's a depressing storyline/environment and there's a lot of motion sickness to be had if you're prone to that (need to adjust field of view).
It's fan made, but i think this remake has the hallmarks of a good game, because it followed the spirit of the original but streamlined some of the slower/longer sections (such as the trains/rails level), and upgraded zen levels to something better than the original imho.
Not to mention the graphics is a definite upgrade. Someone who has no nostalgia for the original half-life games will be better off experiencing this for the first time, rather than the old ones.
Bro I remember that so well I was playing it on my cousin's ninja PC, nothing like capping the army dudes in the back of the head with the magnum.
there's a lot of motion sickness to be had if you're prone to that (need to adjust field of view)
Thanks so much for this, I do own it on Steam but I remember trying to play it years ago and the motion sickness I was only able to get 5 minutes in.
But its so popular I wonder if I should power through it. Thats what I had to do with Portal and was totally worth it. But if I can just adjust the field of view it might help a lot.
Changing FOV helped me. It's decades ago now, but I think FOV 90 was the setting I used (a number of options are suggested on a google search). I've had the same problem with every Half-Life game (and Portal, like you). Did not power through them; did change FOV and play. Good luck!
While I don’t think it’s the best place to start, I do think it’s an OK place to start. The original games are often extremely cheap so I’d recommend trying HL1 first, but some people do genuinely can’t get into old games and, if that was the case, you’d be much better playing this and continuing on to HL2 and Alyx than you would be giving up.
Black Mesa is great imho, and there are a lot of places where they’ve done an impressive job of capturing or genuinely improving upon the good points of the originals, but it’s still ultimately a pretty different game with a somewhat different feel and many of its own unique flaws.
The orange box entry with the car was really cool
Start HL1 (the best game) and follow chronology.
You could, or go back the start.
Purchase the valve pack, it contain 16-17 of their classics.
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/232/Valve_Complete_Pac…
Not a good time to purchase at the moment. Currently $171 AUD
Wait until it is at least 90% discounted. Or not.
This is a good place to start imo. Maybe not the best, but it's a modern interpretation of half life and it's fairly true to the original.
Half life is quite dated and I feel like it would be hard to play if you don't have the nostalgia to drive you. I never fully played the original half life, I played a bit but mainly watched my brother play. I enjoyed black mesa a lot.
Tough one. The first Half-Life hasn't aged well in terms of graphics. But if you can push through that, it's a masterclass in storytelling and immersion.
Maybe watch a walkthrough of the first game until the enemies appear and see if it's the kind of thing you would play through.
But definitely play Half-Life 2. I've played that game to death. You will need a little bit of backstory, but if you don't play the first game, definitely watch a what-to-know YouTube video before playing HL2.
Oh… and play both Portals. I have a list of must-plays for my nieces and nephews. Half-Life and Portal are high on that list.
I recently started playing HL1, the first time since close to release, although the graphics aren't the best it almost feels like a stylistic choice now. They don't feel like they're trying to be realistic (although they probably were at the time). Although I have rose-coloured glasses because I spent 1000s of hours playing TFC.
Get Half Life 2. It was absolutely ground breaking and pioneering at the time, and also has 2 expansions. You'll never be able to handle the ancient graphics of the first one.
any news on Half Life 3??? Instead of remakes after remakes after remakes?
From what they've said its not happening. Essentially they said the expectations for a third game is so high now they could never meet them.
damn, then they should do a remake like this for Opposing Force and Blue Shift
They've done blue shift already, it was released end of last year. You just need to download it as a mod as they've released it for free - instructions on their post here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/362890/view/72852298…
:)
Operation: Black Mesa is an upcoming Opposing Force remake, and Black Mesa: Blue Shift has released the first five chapters (out of eight I believe).
Glad nobody told that to Square Enix re FF7 remake…
They had conditions that they wouldn't remake FF7 until the made a more recent FF game they thought matched it in quality. I'm not sure what game they considered match the quality, I haven't play one since FF7.
The vibe I got from last year's HL2 20th anniversary stuff was that there was some regret over not doing Ep3, so they were looking at getting some new games in the HL/Portal universe happening. I could be wrong - check in with me in another 20 years.
Source?
Valve (allegedly) began rolling out an alpha build to relatives of certain developers for what looks to be an early development stage of HLX/HL3 only a couple months ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQSdohLVa20
Of course take this with a grain of salt as it's Valve making HL3 we're talking about here.
We might be getting closer to another Half-Life game. We've had Half-Life Alyx for 5 years now, and there have been multiple rumours swirling around about another HL game in development. No word as to whether it's a PC or VR game, or whether it's another spin-off, prequel or sequel - but there has definitely been some HL related work going on at Valve over the past couple of years. Whether it ever comes out or not is another question.
My best guess would be that we may see something release at the same time as the next major Valve hardware release. We got Alyx when the Index VR headset launched - I'm guessing we might see this next game when the Deckard headset launches - or maybe it'll be some other hardware we haven't seen yet. Only time will tell!
There actually is news. You can never be sure Valve will ultimately finish the projects they’re working on internally, but source code leaks in other Valve games (and various hiring etc.) show that they’ve been doing major work on a [seemingly non-VR] Half-Life game over the past few years.
This is so good - the soundtrack is incredible as well
They only time I've ever heard of this is in a Jonathan Coulton song "Still Alive". It seems like people really cared about this game..
Maybe you'll find someone else to help you. Maybe Black Mesa…
THAT WAS A JOKE. HA HA. FAT CHANCE.
Anyway, this cake is great. It's so delicious and moist.
So… you've never played Portal itself?
You're really, really, really missing out.
My newest gaming console is a PS2 and that was only bought for my kids. None of us ever really got into gaming.
That's fair. If you ever get a chance though, try it.
Or you could watch playthroughs on YouTube. I do that when I can't defeat final bosses.
The original Half-Life is of the highest-rated games of all time (as is Portal, which the song comes from), although this game is the fan remake. (But also good.)
Will this work on a n100? I don't want to buy if not
![[PC, Steam] Black Mesa $7.37 @ Steam](https://files.ozbargain.com.au/n/89/894989.jpg?h=c176eb09)
I'm replaying through this at the moment, highly recommended!
(Yes the Xen levels are a bit repetitive at the end, but at this price I reckon it's more than worthwhile)